Despite rich archives of work on race and the global economy, most notably by scholars of colour and Global South intellectuals, the discipline of Political Economy has largely avoided an honest confrontation with how race works within the domains it studies, not least within markets.
By way of corrective, this book draws together scholarship on the material function of race at various scales in the global political economy. The collective provocation of the contributors to this volume is that race has been integral to the formation of capitalism – as extensively laid out by the racial capitalism literature – and takes on new forms in the novel market spaces of neoliberalism. The chapters within this volume also reinforce that the current political conjuncture, marked by the ascension of neo-fascist power, cannot be defined by an exceptional intrusion of racism, nor can its racism be dismissed as epiphenomenal.
Raced Markets will be of great value to scholars, students, and researchers interested in political economy and racial capitalism as well as those willing to explore how race takes on new forms in the novel market spaces of contemporary neoliberalism.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the New Political Economy.
Raced Markets: Prefatory Note
David Roediger
Introduction: Raced Markets
Lisa Tilley and Robbie Shilliam
1. Crusoe, Friday and the Raced Market Frame of Orthodox Economics Textbooks
Matthew Watson
2. ‘We All Have a Responsibility to Each Other’: Valuing Racialised Bodies in the Neoliberal Bioeconomy
Sibille Merz and Ros Williams
3. Colonialism, Postcolonialism and the Liberal Welfare State
Gurminder K. Bhambra and John Holmwood
4. Racism and Far Right Imaginaries Within Neo-liberal Political Economy
Richard Saull
5. Detroit’s Municipal Bankruptcy: Racialised Geographies of Austerity
Sawyer Phinney
6. Refugees as Surplus Population: Race, Migration and Capitalist Value Regimes
Prem Kumar Rajaram
Biography
Lisa Tilley is currently a lecturer in Politics at Birkbeck, University of London. Her work focuses on political economy/ecology, race, and historical/present-day colonialism, extraction and expropriation, especially in Southeast Asia. She also co-convenes the CPD-BISA working group and is Associate Editor of Global Social Theory.
Robbie Shilliam is Professor of International Relations at Johns Hopkins University. He is most recently author of Race and the Undeserving Poor (2018) and Decolonizing Politics (2021). He is Editor-in-Chief of International Politics Reviews.
